The Father-Son Conflict in Prometheus Unbound: The Psychology of a Vision

Shelley's unresolved conflict with his father played a crucial role in his life and development as a poet. It lay behind his writing “The Necessity of Atheism,” the publication of which resulted in his expulsion from Oxford during his first year there; it influenced him in his early choice of William Godwin as an intellectual father; and, most important, it established in his mind a preoccupation with the themes of tyranny and liberty, which predominate in much of his poetry, from early poems like Queen Mab and The Revolt of Islam to more mature works like The Cenci and “Hellas.”1 But surprisingly little has been written about the appearance of father-son conflicts in Shelley's poetry, and virtually nothing about the significance of the one in Prometheus Unbound, Shelley's most important poem.2 In this essay I shall present a psychoanalytic interpretation of the conflict between Jupiter and Prometheus. My aim is not only to provide a discussion of some of the neglected psychological problems in the play, but to show that its utopian vision is psychologically sounder than it is generally acknowledged to be.

In the interpretation still most widely accepted, Prometheus is viewed allegorically as “mankind,” or “man.” Mary Shelley sanctioned it in her “Note on Prometheus Unbound” when she said that Prometheus was “the emblem of the human race.”3 Since then numerous critics have taken a similar view.4 But as useful as this interpretation has been for explaining much of the moral and social significance of the play, it has never been carried far enough psychologically to account adequately for the relationship Prometheus has with Jupiter. That relationship is in all but name one of a son with a father. Prometheus cannot refer to Jupiter as a father, as